COMPARE:
HeyReach or PhantomBuster for LinkedIn prospecting
HeyReach and PhantomBuster both do getting prospects out of LinkedIn and into a conversation, and this page puts them on the same seven questions. Mamba Labs builds Apify actors. LinkedIn Post Tracker is ours, it is the third column, and it does not win most of these rows.
Last updated October 12, 2026
The short answer
These are not the same product. PhantomBuster extracts data from LinkedIn. HeyReach runs the outreach afterwards. Teams that ask this usually need both and are hoping one will do.
Side by side
| HeyReach | PhantomBuster | LinkedIn Post Tracker | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it actually does | Runs connection requests, messages and follows from a pool of LinkedIn accounts on one campaign. | Runs a named automation against a platform, on a schedule, and hands back a CSV or a JSON feed. | Takes a LinkedIn profile or company page and returns the posts a search engine has indexed for it: permalink, author, excerpt and publish date. It returns no reactors and no commenters. |
| Coverage and hit rate | Many senders on one campaign, with the daily limits spread across them and tracked per account. | A hundred or so ready automations across LinkedIn, Instagram, X, Sales Navigator and Google Maps. | Only posts a search engine has indexed. On 2026-10-12, none of the 46 posts it found across five sources was from the last 90 days. |
| What it costs | Per connected LinkedIn account per month, so the bill scales with senders and not with leads. | Per execution minute, pooled monthly, so a slow scrape costs more than a fast one. | 0.002 USD per post returned. |
| How it fits a workflow | A real API, webhooks on every reply, and a unified inbox that a team can work together. | Chain phantoms into a flow, or call one over the API and read the result file. | One call per profile or page, from Clay or from a script, and the output is a list of posts, not people. |
| Where the data comes from | It sends. Lists come from Sales Navigator, from your own export, or from an API push. | The platforms themselves, read through your own logged in session. | Search engine results that link to the post. It sends no request to LinkedIn. |
| What it takes to set up | Connect the accounts, set the schedule, warm them up slowly. A few days before it is safe at volume. | Paste a session cookie, set the input, run it. Minutes to a first result. | Paste the profile or company page URL and run it. |
| Where it stops | It is LinkedIn only. Email is a different product and this one does not pretend otherwise. | It automates a page. It does not run a sequence, hold a reply, or keep a conversation. | It reads. It returns no people, sends no connection request, and holds no conversation. |
The same seven questions are asked on every compare page here, in this order, so two of these pages can be read against each other.
Who wins what
- HeyReach wins on coverage and hit rate, how it fits a workflow. LinkedIn outreach built for running many sender accounts at once.
- PhantomBuster wins on what it actually does, what it costs. A catalog of hosted automations that scrape and act on social platforms.
- LinkedIn Post Tracker wins on where the data comes from. It reads search results that link to LinkedIn posts and sends no request to LinkedIn.
- Nobody wins on what it takes to set up, where it stops. HeyReach and PhantomBuster give the same answer on those, and we are not going to invent a difference.
Try them yourself
What we would actually do
If the question is how to get a list of the right people out of LinkedIn, PhantomBuster is the answer and HeyReach is not. If the question is how to message them at any scale, it is the other way round. Plenty of stacks run PhantomBuster into a table and the table into HeyReach, and that works. The version that goes wrong is using PhantomBuster's messaging phantoms as a sequencer. There is no inbox, no reply detection and no way to stop a campaign against somebody who already replied.
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